


Memory of the Past

by Wugim



Category: The Paternoster Gang (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F, Fictional Religion & Theology, Graphic Description of Corpses, Post-Episode Heritage 3: Truth and Bone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24443062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wugim/pseuds/Wugim
Summary: Vastra prays. Jenny worries.
Relationships: Jenny Flint/Madame Vastra
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Memory of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Descriptions of death, religious themes, possession

The floor was made of ornate brick mosaics interspersed with charred hunks of the wall and splattered concrete that trailed to a contorted steel beam that marked the entrance to the rest of the London Underground. As they walked, their lanterns illuminated the bits of broken glass and petrified goo that had come from one of the stasis chambers.

The other stasis chambers were intact, mostly. They had brown liquid in them, pushing against the glass and making a worrying bulge of internal cracks and air pockets that left the air around them smelling putrid.

Jenny shifted the box in her arm, trying to keep the lantern in the other stable to stop it from flickering as they walked out. Staring at the chambers seemed too much like gawking for her taste.

Vastra, it seemed, disagreed. She had set her items down and was sitting at the base of the chamber in the center of the wall. Both her knees were touching the ground and her ere hands resting on the glass with her face pointed up.

“Ma’am?” Jenny asked. Vastra didn’t respond. Her lantern was behind her, barely illuminating her as she swayed slightly, forward and backward. Jenny walked closer to her and could hear Vastra mumbling.

Not mumbling, Jenny realized. She was chanting. No, she was _praying._

Jenny turned to look at the other wall. This entire affair seemed deeply private. She should feel honored, she supposed, that Vastra was allowing her see this place, especially as their purpose was to remove the only item of worth that still remained – but then, Vastra had removed all the rest without her aid. Jenny had only been invited to help disassemble a machine Vastra would have had no way to carry on her own.

The box she was carrying was some sort of database; a library shrunk down into the size of a single book. Vastra was carrying the battery and display monitor that would power it.

Jenny hadn’t agreed that the database was too dangerous for humans to stumble across. It was the database from the residents, not their laboratories, after all. She decided to help anyway, because the idea of Vastra’s heritage being out to the same people who had replaced it was sickening, even if any information gleaned from it would be anecdotal, and translating it in the first place would be difficult, with the strange grammar and writing of the language.

The language was chittering and creaky. It was rude to listen in, just as rude as staring at the defunct stasis chambers. Jenny tried not to, but she couldn’t turn off her hearing. Vastra started trailing off and Jenny heard her mutter the name _Anura_.

Jenny became rigid. It made perfect sense for Vastra to mention her while praying, she _knew_ that. It was just that Jenny remembered the moment Vastra seemed to look through her, seemingly lost to the goddess that–

Vastra stood up, her skirts rustling, so Jenny turned around. Vastra looked alright, not unnaturally graceful and strong. It wasn’t rational to expect that just because Vastra said the name of a goddess during a prayer that she would become like that again. Jenny forced herself to relax and offer Vastra a sympathetic smile.

“My love,” Vastra said. “Do you know how they died?”

Jenny glanced at the chambers, discolored and cracked, and shook her head.

“It was an accident, truly. The contact of primitive human technology and my people’s best, made delicate by the shifting of the continents.” Vastra picked up her box and lantern and came closer to Jenny.

“Did you know that the tunnels in Dorset were once attached to this one?” Vastra asked.

Jenny shook her head and Vastra turned to stare at the chambers. Were they her friends? Coworkers? Her family? Jenny didn’t have the courage to ask.

“It’s true. Some of the floors that covered the fail-safes that kept our slumber safe were stripped of their protective layers. My people used technology that relied on precise wavelength measurements and quantum coordination. Sensors would be place between them to take the energy of the particles in the air to create sources of power.”

“We were so confident. These tunnels were a place of _hope_ , Jenny, but...” Vastra vaguely gestured toward the concrete-filled part of the tunnel.

“One metal catalyst poorly placed and all of power sources that went to keeping the stasis chambers running began to overproduce energy. The energy was converted into heat”—the light from Vastra’s lantern shook around as her voice began to crack—“and the glass held for most of them. I don’t know how mine broke. It was probably cracked before, so when everything evaporated, I managed to escape.”

There was nothing for Jenny to say.

“I have seen where you have come from, Jenny,” Vastra said, “and now you have seen mine.”

Vastra turned around. Her face was contorted, her entire body shaking. A lizard, Jenny realized, couldn’t cry like a human. All of a sudden, it felt very foolish to worry about Anura.

“Ma’am,” Jenny said, moving to gently bump into her. “Let’s go home.”

13 Paternoster Row had originally come with a cellar. There was no basement, just an external entrance to the underground, no larger than a pantry. It was Vastra’s idea to expand it into a proper floor that could be accessed from the house, and her idea again to build another story beneath it for hiding away the Silurian artifacts they seemed to run across at a concerning frequency nowadays.

Her gut twisted as they assembled the database, but then she would look at Vastra’s face and she looked so _happy_ that Jenny didn’t have the heart to mention it.

It was very, very foolish, Jenny decided, to worry about Anura. Vastra had promised it wouldn’t be an issue again, and who was Jenny to question her wife’s integrity?

After all, they built the Siluritum _before_ Vastra had been possessed.

Her mind elsewhere, it took a moment to realize they were finished. Excitedly, Vastra put her hand on the interface and it light sputtered against the wall.

“It’s a telepathic interface!” Vastra said. “A proper interface! And look, Jenny! It hasn’t been erased!”

Scenes passed quickly, and Jenny could only get a brief look at each. Silurians sitting at desks, Silurians with tools, small Silurians, old Silurians, buildings, strange looking animals, plants-

It all looked lovely, but any information in it would be worthless if no one could stay on one image long enough to learn from it. 

“How do you use it?” She asked.

Vastra stood still for a moment, and then placed her hand on the device.

“I’ll show you,” Vastra said. “It records your memories and allows them to be displayed back.”

Memories – the memories of the dead were being displayed.

“I thought once that they needed to be avenged,” Vastra said quietly. 

"What do you think now?" Jenny asked. 

Vastra didn't respond. 

It was just as well, because Jenny understood, and the nervousness she was feeling finally receded. Properly receded.

The goddess could never offer them such a blessing.


End file.
